1. Woodruff, A. (2014, January 24). Soba: More Than Just Noodles. . Retrieved August 3, 2014, from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/21/264399896/why-soba-is-more-than-just-food-its-an-art-form

2. What the article that I had been reading was about a Traditional
Japanese Cuisine known as Washoku. The main point about this article is that it discusses how hard it is to find in the United States and also discusses how one woman in Los Angeles is trying to bring back the Japanese Culture one of the more famous plates in its culture. To do such a thing, the woman has been organizing various cooking classes around the Los Angeles area. The article discusses that although finding Washoku isn’t the thing that’s hardest to find, but it is rather the authenticity of Washoku that is hard to find.

3. One of the main problems in this article is the fact that the
authentic of Washoku is difficult to find in the United States due to
the fact that there are different types of noodles being used for the dish. In the United States, we often see that the noodles in the US are made mostly of wheat flour. While on the other
hand, in Japan, the key ingredient is buckwheat for the noodles. People from Japan that come to the United States are often disappointed and rather upset with how the States often butcher their Japanese culture behind Washoku. The way Soba had started out and got to Japan is what enriches the culture behind the famous Japanese dish. “Soba, Sakai says, “came to Japan as a porridge, and the Buddhist monks who studied in China had it during their long meditative journeys. And they brought it back to Japan, and the people in Japan turned it into noodles” (Woodruff, Soba Is More Than Just a Food, 2014).

In relation to the previous articles read for this particular topic of Food as an Art Form, I believe the article places a good example of an aesthetic reaction to certain things such as the taste or smell of a
particular food item. “Second, as with the other examples of aesthetic
reaction, we can distinguish liking the taste and smell
of food from approving of it instrumentally on the grounds that it is
nourishing, fashionable or produced by politically respectable
regimes. Likewise, we can distinguish the person who enjoys his food but does not notice what he eats, from the person whose awareness is more vivid–the latter reaction being the only one which is characteristically aesthetic” (Telfer Pg.4). This relates back to the Japanese culture because those who recognize what is behind the cuisine can consider it an art form as well as those who recognize the difference from the dish when it is made in the United States or in Japan.